Questions tagged [underground]
For questions dealing with things that happen beneath the surface of the planet or other celestial body, except for things that happen in water (use [underwater] for that).
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Would a species living underground be heavier for their height than humans?
A humanoid species lives underground in the earth's crust. They spend the majority of their childhood underground, then live above ground during adolescence and early adulthood before returning back ...
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Growing food by firelight
The question of what the citizens of fantasy underground kingdoms eat is usually handwaved to: "they trade for their food", or "they eat mushrooms". I would like my undergrounders ...
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How could an Underground city be ventilated? [duplicate]
Normally, human activity produces heat and therefore, an underground city would have to ventilate and facilitate air flow.
What are some ways in which this could be possible?
Details about the setting:...
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Underground City Temperature. Is it possible for an underground city/settlement to be cold?
I am trying to envision an underground city and I'm uncertain of wether or not the general climate would be cold or hot.
In one hand, the lack of sunlight and overall isolation from surface weather ...
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How could you get road vehicles down into the London Underground network?
For my current project, I'm playing with various options for living spaces underground, where a section of society is being kept safe from harm above within the London Underground network. I wrote a ...
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How would tunneling mold tunnel?
I've recently been reading up on mold creating subway networks and I thought that it would a neat thing to add to my world.
So I have giant subterranean slime molds in my world that creates tunnels as ...
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Is it possible with modern-day technology to expand an already built bunker further below without the risk of collapsing the entire bunker?
In my fictional setting, albeit close to real world, there is a research facility built on a remote island in a form an underground multi-floor bunker.
This bunker does not look like a mine - it is, ...
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A Sea of Mist and Steam? How would boats move?
How would a boat be designed for sailing through a sea made from mist and steam?
This sea of mist and sea is a naturally occurring place in the world I made, it is in a deep, giant underground cave, ...
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Can I provide sunlight many hundred meters below ground or underwater
I am working on some sort of space colony many metres below the ground or underwater. Is there any way that I can work this idea toward using natural sunlight instead of artificial light source?
When ...
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What effect do caves have on music played in them?
Fantasy beings such as dwarves and goblins are often shown playing music underground. However, reading the Planet Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder, he claims that the only sounds that carry well ...
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What effects to expect from 100+ generations living subterranean with constant low doses of radiation
Back story is that humans settled a foreign planet and the star began to die so humans went subterranean until the worst of the star death cycle passed (yes I know this process theoretically takes ...
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What could be the base source of sustenance in the underworld?
On the surface of the world the sun is the source of energy for plants and the food chain goes up from that. How could a similar base for a food chain be established in the large world below?
I am ...
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How would humans evolve if they began living underground? [closed]
So I am creating a world where some humans begin to live underground and in caves under mountains but I am struggling a bit with how they might evolve. My problem is that I don't want them to just be ...
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Flooding space tunnels to trap some characters! [closed]
Humans have terraformed another planet; part of how they have done so involves utilizing (and building new) caves and tunnels (could be lava tubes, or could be another planet which has something ...
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Is it possible for an artesian basin to go underneath a shallow sea while still being freswater?
An artesian basin is an aquifer in which water within permeable rock is kept under pressure between 2 layers of impermeable rock.
I don't know if any artesian basin exists like this in real life, but ...
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Underground civilization vs. a blowout
How could an underground civilization (think prototypical fantasy dwarves) deal with the situation of inadvertently mining into an oil-and-gas bearing, pressurized stratum (i.e. creating themselves a ...
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Geology and tidal forces on moon with Earth-life surface, but very unstable underground
I am writing a story set on a mining colony moon with some very odd geological conditions, and while this idea is admittedly likely impossible to fully make geologically plausible but I wanted to see ...
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Could a subterranean river or aquifer generate enough continuous momentum to power a waterwheel for the purpose of producing electricity?
The imagined scenario is of a small city built inside of a chasm that draws most of its water from an aquifer or underground river. The place and time in which the scenario takes place is Earth and ...
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Is there reason for a large subterranean area to be cold?
There is a roughy 2500x2500x500-1000ft / 750x750x150-300m enclosed subterranean area. The roof is ~250 feet / 75 meters (at most) from the surface. I understand that the thermal gradient will largely ...
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How deep underground could a city plausably be?
So I'm working on a planet for a Sci-fi RPG setting. The basic idea is 'an earth-sized planet, far from the sun, too cold to live on, but with very earth-like gravity, so people live in underground ...
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Houses in an underground city
The city I’m making is in a large underground cavern, very wide and open and I want to know what the housing would be like. This city is not exactly futuristic but definitely industrial. Late 1800’s ...
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Underground cities
The ancient underground cities of Turkey are dug into soft, dry ash above deep streams. Are there similar locations in North America that such structures could be dug/constructed?
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Would stalked hair help a tunneling humanoid?
Many mammals that dig and live in underground tunnels have short/no hair, so as to avoid the hair being bent backwards if they need to reverse out of their tunnel. However, I'd like my tunneling ...
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Could underground bushes feasibly develop to have this?
In my Dungeons and Dragons setting, the deep gnomes (svirfneblin) and dark elves (drow) have been fighting an underground war for several decades. The drow have managed to subjugate the svirfneblin ...
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Can Nanorobots make oxygen to terraform Mars?
I have devised a way of colonising Mars by pantropy, (that is, by adapting life to the environment rather than terraforming it, which is exorbitantly expensive and time-consuming). The process ...
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How much do tunnels extend blast waves from explosives?
Someone recommended this SE for this question, since I'm asking it to help a friend's setting, where dwarves and goblins fight underground with explosives. After asking if it was OK, I cross-posted ...
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Major underground caverns on a world with considerable geologic activity?
The world I designed, while habitable and capable of hosting carbon based life is characterized by a considerable volcanic and seismic activity caused by the tidal heating of the gas giant it orbits.
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Where does the hero go in Central London in a Nuclear strike?
Let me set the scene.
It’s 1994, the cold war is nearing it’s end. Regardless of the fact that the Soviet union is breaking up, a high-ranking general in the Red Army decides this is the perfect ...
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What's a viable reason for why underground societies are more accepting of slavery?
In fantasy, a relatively common trope in fantasy settings, particularly D&D, is underground societies that are more willing to endorse slavery than surface-dwelling societies.
We see it in the ...
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What location options are available for a large-scale underground mining city
In the late 18th century, a strange project was proposed by a Dutch engineer regarding a certain English expedition. The British Empire held a vast amount of territories at this time and had much to ...
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How would dwarves build a combined underground kiln, forge and bakery oven
These dwarves are making steel tools and weapons, bricks, plates and other ceramics, as well as (and most importantly for this world) bread all underground crucially from the same structure. Any ...
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What could cause a city to be buried underground but still remain relatively intact?
I am taking inspiration from games like Dark Souls (Dark Souls 1: Lost Izalith, Dark Souls 2: Shulva - Sanctum City, Dark Souls 3: Profaned Capital) and Elden Ring (Eternal Cities - yes it is ...
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Does an Undead Kingdom where the Lower Class live near the surface while the Upper Class lives underground below them make any sense?
I'm working on a story where all the characters are various Undead (we're talking typical D&D Ghosts, Wraiths, Zombies, and Skeletons, albeit with sentience) that all live together in the highly ...
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How would an underground society measure time? [duplicate]
I have a very mind-boggling question about time reckoning.
I have a race of Dwarves, that at the very beginning of their history lived only underground and were forbidden to reach the surface. They ...
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What ways could an underground society decompose bodies?
What methods could an underground society with no access to the surface help to speed the decomposition rate of bodies?
Ideally, is there a method they could speed decomposition and still use the ...
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How would a group with strong leadership skills create an initial government? [closed]
A group of 1000 political “dissenters” and their families have been captured and forced into an underground bunker. Because many of them have some sort of background in politics and/or leadership, it ...
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What would the survival rate be for a group of people forced into an underground, bunker style community?
Suppose 1000 people were forced underground into a relatively well set up bunker style community. Assuming they have no official leadership or organization to begin with, they must rapidly learn their ...
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What could feyfolk use for lighting?
In my setting diminutive races like fairies, gnomes, and gremlins exist and to handle of the cooler climates such as in Europe and protect themselves for their many predators many of them live ...
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Around how advantageous is it to build underground
I apologize for the vagueness in the title, I will explain what I mean in here. In my world, I am thinking that in the future, the path of buildings started to go into building deeper underground, ...
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How quickly will the oceans freeze if Earth becomes a rogue planet?
Assume Earth has been wrenched out of the Sun's orbit and has become a rogue planet (for the purposes of this question, assume that it happens near instantaneously, i.e. say the Sun just vanishes). ...
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Could an underground civilisation deduce the size and shape of their planet?
Not sure if this still falls under worldbuilding. Let's assume a civilization living with the following restrictions:
No access to the surface or ability to observe it (no sky, no atmospheric samples ...
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How feasible/widespread would arcology/underground structures be on an highly tectonic world?
It is pretty much guaranteed that my world would have very intense tectonic activity, plus it would be about 23% smaller than the earth and I have been wondering how that would influence the ...
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What would the fossorial people's senses be like?
The fossorial people are described partly here. They are adapted for life underground. While they must go aboveground for wood and fruit, they prefer to stay underground, and have a diet of mostly ...
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Clothing for Fossorial People
The fossorial people are small humanoids. They have hair on their head, but it only grows to around shoulder length. They also have similar hair on their chest, hands, and feet. This hair can resist ...
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What sweet foods could be dug out of the ground?
What could exist buried in the earth that is sugary and can be used to sweeten food? It should be relatively common, and at a depth where it is only accessible to peoples specialized for digging (...
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Is this Subterranean Isolationist City Self-Sufficient
In the story I'm writing, there is a city located entirely underground in a complex network of artificial and nature tunnels and chambers under and inside of a mineral-rich mountain range. An ...
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What would these demons use in place of wood?
Demons live deep in the underworld. The underworld is a strange place: It is a cave system, composed mainly many extremely large caverns, with a few wide corridors connecting them. The ground of these ...
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Could these demons exist?
The demons are large subterranean humanoids. They are human-like in form and intelligence, and around 8ft tall when stood up. Their face is elongated, with a vaguely canine-appearing snout. They have ...
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Does this vegetable make sense?
This vegetable is a fungus grown by the people described in this question. It is egg-shaped with no stalk, and is around 1m tall and 70cm across at the widest point. They can be, and often are, ...
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Could this rock-badger exist?
Rock-badgers are large mustelids with a strange ability: They can burrow through stone. They achieve this with large, slightly mole-like forelimbs, with mineralized claws that can cut through stone. ...
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